Of Chainmail and Plums
by ParlorGamesToMe
Summary: "'You want me to join you and destroy Midgard' Thor questions thickly- not stupid, but dense, for his words all conjoin, his voice compacting as he speaks." Instead of becoming an Avenger, Thor follows Loki and makes all the wrong choices.


Thor often thinks that winter has a taste. When he breathes in the air, he can feel the chill on his tongue, a sensation that reminds him of sugar and ice.

Loss has a taste, too. After all his time alone in Asgard- not alone, for others did their best to comfort him- he became accustomed to flavor. The thing about loss is that you don't even know you've popped it into your mouth until you gulp; and suddenly, bitter and pungent, you can feel the stain on your tongue, but you've already swallowed, and it will never depart. Toxic, it is the essence of betrayal and regret intermingled.

As Thor throws his dear, dear brother from the flying machine, he can't help but recall another night during which Loki fell. Tonight, they tumble together as the crescent moon hangs in the sky like a smile half-finished.

They hit rock. Without much of any noise, Thor pulls himself up, and then Loki. Sometimes, Thor wonders where his words have gone. Still, he needs not worry. Loki so considerately takes charge, his tone jagged and his words more so.

"I could rule you, could control you and make you follow me as they now do. I have the power now, the strength to rule in ways you never could!" Loki rants. His eyes glimmer like windows iced over. Crossing his arms against his chest, the other god does not tear his eyes away from his brother.

"Then why do you not?" Thor retorts. As far as words go, they are concise and excruciatingly direct, striking a raw center. Slowly, Loki inches away from his brother; Thor can't help but think that he would do anything to connect the distance between them. Everything's all just empty space, space to filled or elongated, all depending unfairly upon words.

Loki pauses, a brief instant of something flickering in his gaze. Coated in oil, a sickly lie begins to emerge from his lips, and Thor's eyes widen in realization. He knows Loki's soul as well as his own, for when he walks in dimly lit rooms, Thor can see his brother's shadow sewn to the soles of his feet.

"You wanted me to join of my own free will." Thor understands, his voice perfectly level.

Loki makes no denial. He never feels as if he needs to around Thor, because he is a twisted reflection of his brother. Turn the jötun inside out, and let his ribs cover him like chainmail: then, only then, can Thor be found, because they are each other's converses and cores.

Loki's head mischievously angles to the side. Nearly drawing blood, he bites a thin lip. Staring at Thor with a baffled curiosity, he is momentarily stunned.

"Well," Loki says finally, his voice full of puzzlement. "Yes, I did."

Two ravens caw out, but Thor doesn't hear their call. Just yes yes yes yes yes from his brother's lips like the most sacred of confessions.

"You want me to join you and destroy Midgard?" Thor questions thickly- not stupid, but _dense_, for his words all conjoin, his voice compacting as he speaks.

"Not destroy it, Thor, never _destroy_ it- not completely, at least. I wish to rule it, to become king- my rightful place, do you not see? Two thrones have been stolen from me, the domains that were rightfully mine!" Thor's face falls. Staring far too long and far too painfully at his brother, Loki pauses, then speaks again with a gentler tone. "But yes, Thor: essentially, I wish for you to join me."

Loki softens, and Thor can almost glimpse the more compassionate facet of his brother. He searches Loki's countenance, tries to locate something good, something right and whole and truly him. Looking intently, Thor can't understand what he finds there.

Loki's tongue brushes his cracked lips. He doesn't smile, just waits, expectant and so completely vulnerable that Thor bridges the gap between them. Fervently, his hands clasp Loki's shoulders. Bewildered, frightened, even, his brother shudders, anticipating the blow Thor has yet to bestow.

"You will…you will let me be your brother again?" Thor asks, the conditional that cracks his voice. The stealer of thrones long bestowed to someone else gazes upon his brother, hopeful. He prepares to fracture. Loki furrows his brow.

"Are you actually considering this?" the jötun stammers, as if he never truly foresaw Thor's reaction, as if he had pictured someone else's conquest from the start.

"You are my brother, Loki. I lost you once, and I do not have the heart to do it again." Thor replies. The ravens cry out shrilly. Thor almost feels a single eye upon him, expectant, gathering the poor paucity of misplaced faith it still has.

"Then," Loki says uncertainly, absolutely cruelly, as if he punishes Thor one final time. "You are ready for all this will entail? You may never see _her_ again. The All-Father, Mother, all of Asgard will abhor you, holding you in the same matter they now detest me? You will be a monster, a villain, a failure beyond all failures. You can never return to them again or receive their forgiveness. The Midgardians you so zealously protected, they will be what you will slaughter, what you will regulate like animals- less than animals, like insects. Do you honestly have the _heart_ for any of that?" His voice surfaces smugly, almost satisfied as he illuminates his prerequisites.

"I chose them once and found myself regretting it." Thor answers. Loki grins, his teeth like daggers shining in his mouth. Thor finds himself drawn in; an identical wild smirk spreads across his face, darkening it. Thor notices the beauty in Loki, he has always seen that, but he also detects a stark repulsiveness that may have been there all along, too. Above all, Thor perceives that Loki does not answer his most imperative question. Then and there, he knows what epithet he must earn.

Something zooms by, sudden and swift. Before he can fight the being, it brings Thor to a clearing in the woods. Angrily, Thor gets to his feet and focuses upon the peculiar figure made from metal. He turns to Loki, eyes full of questions, waiting, hoping for the chance to impress his brother, to prove his worthiness.

Loki nods, slowly, almost imperceptibly in the gloom, nods and seems to say, '_Yes, Thor, do it, do it for me.'_ And what can Thor do but joyfully comply? They are of composite shadows.

The two ravens rise around them, their screeches shrill and fearful. Death, they call for death, black upon the night, skeletal hand extended for the throats of men. Men, none so powerful, so mighty as the two creatures that call for blood, for ends, for bones scattered across battlefields, for glory and defeat and ascending flames and the scent of mutilated bodies. They, though, were not men, never_ men_.

Mjölnir hits the helm of the metallic man thing, denting it. The hammer hits again and again and again until Thor can hear the unmistakable crunch of bone along with metal collapsing. He doesn't smile, doesn't really feel anything at all. A strange thought sputters in his mind: he is learning how it feels to solidify. Without much other pondering, he brings Mjölnir up to deliver the final blow, to bring the whimpering broken metal man to his death. It's all so unseemly, he decides, but he has felt blood drip down his hands for causes far less worthy than this.

Something circular smacks Thor in the head, but he hardly blinks. Honestly, it feels more like a fly's wings gently brushing his face. The object flies through the air so swiftly that the god of thunder nearly doesn't see it. The thing- a shield with a star in the center- circles around, almost like a boomerang, into the hands of a strangely dressed man that Thor doesn't recognize.

"Stop!" the blond man cries, his voice very near to quavering. It amuses the gods that the man wears his bravery above a husk of trepidation. "Get away from him!" Thor just laughs, crazy, wild, so unlike him as the sound reverberates. The blood dripping from a cut on his forehead falls into his mouth. It tastes like rust.

Thor's eyes fix on Loki as if to ask if his brother is watching. And, oh, Ymir, is Loki _watching_. They laugh in synchronization, courting insanity together. So this is what it feels like to fall apart in tandem. Loki is Thor's and Thor is Loki's; what price would be too steep to return his brother to him?

Calmly, Thor just shakes his head. Smashing the skull of that metalloid being one final time, the blond god cheerfully makes a spectacle for his brother. Gruesomely, blood streaks the hammer, obscuring the inscription. The other man, clad so oddly, says something, his voice echoing, horrified. Thor beckons him nearer, beckons him to die. Such a show for Loki!

"I am a god, Midgardian," Thor declares, a bit more pompously than he usually acts. Peculiar and anomalous, the attitude doesn't suit him; he seems more like a child trying on his idol's clothing and it hangs loosely upon his frame. He tugs the outfit on and sneers at the new arrival.

"The god I know would never murder a man in cold blood," the blond man scoffs with disdain. He holds his shield in front of him, but Thor can hear his erratic heartbeat beyond the barrier. It is the rhythm of chaos, a thump thump thump that distinguishes predator and prey.

"Then, perhaps, you have not been consorting with the _worthier_ gods. Would you like to finally meet one?" Thor speaks in a voice that is not his own, a voice smooth as velvet, a speech smithed. Blazing at the touch, searing enough to make organs melt, the words line his tongue in silver. He draws Loki in, holds him unyielding, and doesn't let his brother disappear. Together, the brothers smirk under the stars. They are sons of moonlight, children of the witching hour when the darkness pools under lunar circlets.

He colors himself to match Loki's hue, unstitching his skin until the organs show. In due time, the brothers will be of identical reflections. With one last glance at Loki, Thor strides towards the blonde man. Holding Mjölnir out, the god of thunder remembers when he and Loki played knucklebones; and they ate strawberries so sweet they had to have been fed by sugar water; and when they slept in the same bed as children, curled around each other; how they always had enough cakes to bring with them went they went exploring; and how Loki followed his lead so wonderfully, but took over when Thor needed him. They were equally each others' shadows and scriptures.

No.

No.

_No._

Focus.

It will be fixed. In time, it will all be fixed.

The man shakes his head as the blonde god arrogantly approaches him. His disparagement gives Thor just enough time to snap his neck. Across the forest, the sound echoes, a crack of bone and then impact against the ground. Expressionless, Thor picks up the shield and covers the man's chest with it so he will rest under the stars.

Staring briefly at the fallen before him, Thor wonders if they could have been something. Could have taken down Loki and won and brought him home and _lived_.

But then Loki grins and he is justly astray.

Thor always did think that death tasted like the skin of a plum, acrid in its sweetness; he is surprised to find the flavor upon his tongue metamorphosing into a taste far more ambrosial.

So caught in the sensation, he scarcely notices Loki looming towards him. Blissfully interlacing, Loki's long fingers wrap around Thor's. His eyes- an inconsistent shade compared to what Thor recalls- glimmer. For a moment, Thor feels like a heroic big brother once more.

Dodging trees, the ship lands, hitting the ground with a quiet thud. Their feeling of kinship dulls, shatters, and dissipates into the air. Tilting his head towards the aircraft, Loki drops Thor's hand. Thor nods, and moves away from his brother, Mjölnir in hand. They snatched away the feeling. Thor vows then and there to do everything in his power to reclaim it.

A lesser being, a minute ant clamoring to be quashed underfoot, streams out of the aircraft

"Stark? Rogers?" a voice calls out cautiously. A red headed woman steps out warily, and though Thor cannot see her face, he almost desires to.

"They are over here," Loki quips impishly. His lips spread in a benign smile, stretching, stretching, stretching as he bares bone white teeth.

The woman surveys the ground. Suddenly, her eyes land upon the metal man thing and the peculiarly dressed broken necked figure. Her breath catches in her chest. Sickeningly triumphant, Loki meets her dread with a laugh, an exquisite, exquisite noise that Thor has almost forgotten, joyous and right and Loki's, the thing he replayed in his head in his brother's absence. Therefore, it is no startling revelation when Thor's dry lips crack open and burble the same hideous, hideous crow.

Thor feels as if he is splintering apart and being sewn together at the same time. The sound is a poultice that carves as it heals.

Drawing a gun, the woman gathers herself together swiftly, ever so consummate.

"You think that will stop me?" Thor scoffs. "I am a god."

"And I'm a ballerina. But believe me, I can take you down just the same." Her red lips curve into the faintest smile.

"You trifle with matters you do not comprehend. I could kill you where you stand without taking a step."

"Go ahead and try. I've always liked a challenge." the woman replies, her expression dimming.

"I grow tired of this exchange." Loki drawls. He waves a hand imperiously like a child playing at an emperor. "Kill her, Thor."

Before the woman can even consider the notion, Thor hurls Mjölnir at her. Dodging the hammer, she flips around and lands effortlessly upon the dirt.

"You missed," she jibes. Straightening herself up, she resumes a fighting stance. The gun fires, but Thor merely steps aside. He can taste her concealed terror on the tip of his newly forged tongue. It awakens a strong hunger within him, a hunger for meat. All of them smell of fear: the metallic figure, the man of stars, and this woman with hair of flame, and even the two gods. Some just hide it better.

Around the woman's fists, electricity from a Midgardian device sizzles. Thor laughs, raising his fists to the sky as lightening dances in the sky.

"I do not think I did," he retorts simply, a sick sneer on his face. As soon as draws his lips together, Mjölnir soars backwards, hurrying back to his hand. Whirring loudly, whipping up wind, it plows straight into the woman's back and tears her in half. The crunch of bone permeates the air. Her legs and torso, divided clean in half from her body, drop to the ground. Dutifully, Mjölnir returns to Thor's hand. Scattered about the ground- and in a few trees, Thor notes- the rest of the woman lands. Nonchalantly, he brushes entrails off of Mjölnir.

Tugging Thor upwards, Loki pulls on his threads, and staring at the electric blue in his brother's eyes, Thor can't help but question who holds his brother's strings. Instead of inquiring, Thor hefts Mjölnir at the vessel, tearing through the hull. If anyone lurked inside, they can't spy anymore.

The air fizzles with the voltage of a ship exploding.

As Loki grins, Thor is struck by a craving for plums.

Hand in hand, the brothers stroll down the path to their infinite, emerging atrocities.

A few hours later, a group known as S.H.I.E.L.D meets Thor and Loki in New York City. Agents descend from an enormous, flying metal monster, person after person after person, a doomed parade. Thor just laughs with a sound like the death of light as lightening crackles around him. It flickers jovially around his hammer, and with a single gesture, into the unwilling hearts of men.

No matter how many Midgardian soldiers come to fight, they all march only to die abruptly and ingloriously. For every Chitauri soldier struck down, ten more arise in its place. Futilely, Midgardians fight and in greater numbers, they flee. Gleefully, Barton shoots his arrows, caring not who they strike, smiling as his former allies fall. At one point, Thor believes he hears a name on the archer's lips, one unfamiliar to the god. Natasha, Natasha, _Natasha_. Barton falters, only to snap back to his macabre task. The job is hardly over, not yet, and they have a city to raze.

A colossal, green creature throws Loki off the building, roaring as loud as the thunder. Hefting Mjölnir, Thor launches the hammer at the abominable creature. His lips curl in a hateful snarl, a demon's grin, and something golden falls away from him. Over and over again, he strikes the creature, countering every blow until it moves no longer, a ruined mass. Blood streaks Thor's hair and dots his face. Proudly, he offers Loki his hand, which his brother haughtily accepts. They smile with mouthfuls of bone colored teeth, maws dripping with the crimson stain of blood.

In his other hand, a green head without a body dangles, the black hair clenched in Thor's fingers. Like a gift, he brandishes it to a satisfied Loki.

"It is magnificent," Thor tells Loki, who shoots down an aircraft with his scepter. "And it is all yours for the taking, brother."

"I think," Loki smiles wolfishly. "That you may share in this win. I will not leave you entirely throne-less, though I have every right."

"I made the right choice, did I not, brother?" Thor wonders, pausing between words to avoid a barrage of gunshots. In return, Loki makes sure to blast the shooter in the heart.

"You are with me. How could any other choice compare?" Loki says imperiously, but Thor hears him when he speaks.

"You are my brother." Thor answers simply, for even as a child he knew no other way to phrase it. Once he felt loss trail down his throat, he knew he would do anything to rid himself of the taste. His validation evaporates in the heat of lightening, because the conclusion does not always excuse the barbarity.

"And you, mine. Now, come, Thor. We have much to do together, you and I. Let us not waste our time with idle chitchat. We shall have time enough for that when our victory transpires. If we are good with our work, the city will fall before another hour passes." Loki decides. Thor has never truly followed anyone before, but Loki seems a good place to start. Together, they spar, brothers in more than arms and shades.

It is a symphony of dark and light intertwined, music composed by those who sin and those who sing.

Shrieks reverberate in the air, a perpetual cycle. Sirens wail. Along the skyline, buildings crumble and lights extinguish. Purposefully, helicopters race only to plummet and crush those they meant to save. In the air, Thor tastes not ice and sugar but smoke and meat.

Thor thinks he hears someone scream as he smashes his hammer against their skull. One person is joined by another and another and another and still more as his arms ache with the swings. Strange, he would remark if he wasn't preoccupied, how the sound nurtures a singular apathy within him.

An aura lurks in the air like a detached string; and if Thor pulls, it will all unravel, and so he lets it hang undisturbed.

Thor recalls how he loved Midgard; and, truthfully, he still does, but he loves Loki more. He fights with his back to his brother, the two of them striking in unison. Loki's mirth fills his ears like a song he once loved but had long since forgotten. The words return to him a great rush, a crescendo. Thor finds himself humming as he breaks the skulls of his opponents.

Men tumble into graves of rubble, coverings of ash, burned in their pyres.

Some weep as lightening strikes; others beg; some blubber, snot running down their faces; and others just bleed complacently on the ground, surrendering to their death blows. Token sized clay sculptures fragmenting, weak creatures, lesser creatures Loki convinced him on the way to New York.

As the world divides, Thor and Loki wrap fibers around each other, dense fibers, fibers stronger than iron and flexible as moonbeams, fibers that warm them like sunlight as people stiffen and do not move.

Pathetic things, children playing at being soldiers, simpletons among gods, the Midgardians fight and fight and fight needlessly until they simply do not anymore.

Thor and Loki smirk as anarchy claims the city. Somewhere in a time near, twin thrones wait to be filled.

Scarlet veins the city, colors it so masterfully. Soon, the brothers know gleefully, the city will fall; and what can they all do but _kneel_?


End file.
